Topic: Ig Nobel

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In the News (Tue 31 Mar 15)

The first IgNobels were awarded in 1991, when they were described as discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced." The name is a pun on the word "ignoble" and the name Nobel Prize.

The ceremony is followed a few days later by the Ig Informal Lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in which laureates have the opportunity to explain their achievements and their relevance to the general public.

Unlike the Darwin Awards, whose aim is strictly to entertain, the aim of the IgNobel is also to arouse public interest in science.

IgNobel Prizes are awarded to individuals whose achievements cannot or should not be reproduced.

The first IgNobel Prizes were awarded by The Journal of Irreproducible Results in 1968; the winners' names have been misplaced.

The 1991IgNobel Laureates: Chemistry: Jacques Benveniste, prolific proselytizer and dedicated correspondent of Nature, for his persistent discovery that water, H2O, is an intelligent liquid, and for demonstrating to his satisfaction that water is able to remember events long after all trace of those events has vanished.

In front of a paper-airplane-throwing audience of 1,200 people at Harvard University, IgNobel prizes were given to sociologists who unravelled a link between country music and suicide, physicists who have earnestly explored and explained the dynamics of hula-hooping, and an ingenious bald man who patented the infamous "Bobby Charlton" combover hairstyle.

Real Nobel prizewinners turn up to hand out the prizes, to be challenged to explain their work in 30 seconds, and to be booed off stage.

The IgNobel prizewinners turn up at their own expense to be given worldwide recognition for their extraordinary observations and what the organisers describe as "prizes made of extremely cheap materials and a medallion that's pretty awkward to wear".

These are past recipients of the IgNobel Prizes, awards celebrating "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced" that have grown in the last decade from a modest stunt to an elaborate spectacle broadcast on National Public Radio and websites worldwide.

Unlike other spoof awards, the IgNobels receive a large number of self-nominations, and go to great lengths to confirm that their recipients are willing.

The IgNobels archives are dotted with the dishonest (from Michael Milken to Enron), the obscene (from MRIs of copulating couples to a survey of nose-picking), and the severely misled (from Dan Quayle to Deepak Chopra).

The first thing noted by anyone entering the 1998 edition of the IgNobel Prizes was James "The Amazing" Randi's flaming white beard, glowing seemingly brightly enough to light the room, beaming out from a phalanx of seated dignitaries, almost all dressed in lab coats and numbering four (real) Nobel laureates among them.

AIR awards the IgNobel Prizes to individuals whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced" in a ceremony held each year, though Marc later verbally added a more accurate explanation: the awards reward the unusual in science that make you think.

IgNobel Prizes for results that “cannot or should not be reproduced.” Some winners actually have lobbied to be awarded an Ig, but that doesn’t mean it’s all a big joke.

This year’s IgNobel Prize for Physics went to Arnd Leike of the University of Munich (home to the annual Oktoberfest and a great deal of beer foam) for his paper, Demonstration of the exponential decay law using beer froth.

Nobel Laureate Dudley Herschbach is a regular presenter at the IgNobels and the Frank B. Baird Jr.

And IgNobel laureates, singled out for their magnificently dubious contributions to science, have been heard to express the sentiment that they would rather be dead than be so honored.

Genuine Nobel laureates will be on hand to present the awards, and several of the soon-to-be Ig Nobelists have promised to be there to accept, the remainder apparently being either in hiding or prison.

The IgNobel Board of Governors, whoever they are, try very, very hard not to accidentally or otherwise damage the careers or prospects of any winner.

The photos have also earned NakaMats the 2005 IgNobel Prize in nutrition, which the inventor accepted in a ceremony combining the surreal and slapstick at the Sanders Theatre at Harvard University.

There were 10 prizes this year: The IgNobel Prize in medicine went to Gregg Miller, inventor of Neuticles, artificial testicle replacements for neutered dogs and other animals, which come in different sizes and levels of firmness.

But there was one twist for the IgNobel record books: Harvard physics professor Roy Glauber, after spending a decade attending IgNobel ceremonies and sweeping paper airplanes off the Sanders stage, was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics earlier this week.

Nobel laureates may be more important, he said, "but we still have our place." Nobel winner Lipscomb said, "Science should be fun." and Marc Abrahams, the editor of the Journal of Irreproducible Results and Ig master of ceremonies, summed up the evening: "It went very quickly.

These were the IgNobel prize givings, originating from Alfred Nobel's fictitious brother Ig, and awarded annually by the Journal of Irreproducible Results, a sort of scientific equivalent of Private Eye, which gives awards "for achievements which cannot - and should not - be reproduced".

An editor of this journal was persuaded to come to the IgNobel ceremony and admit that each of these authors was responsible, statistically, for exactly two words.

For the uninformed, the IgNobel prizes came about ten years ago, the brainchild of the Massachusetts Cambridge-based HotAir, which is famous, among other things, for its magazine on science humour, the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).

Whereas the Nobel Prizes are a celebration of outreaching achievements that have benefited people, or will benefit people in the near future, the IgNobel prizes (which only began a mere ten years ago) are for “achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced”.

The IgNobel Board of Governors’s dictum is: “First, do no harm.” It is therefore their duty to confer with the scientists who have been considered for an IgNobel Prize to determine if winning would cause them any professional difficulties.

Rather less glorious then is to be the not-so-proud recipient of an ‘IgNobel’ Prize, but for the 14th year running, these spoof awards have been held in a gala ceremony attended by 1,200 people at the prestigious Harvard University in Massachusetts.

The IgNobel prize winners attend at their own expense to be given worldwide recognition for their extraordinary observations and receive what the organisers told the Guardian were, “prizes made of extremely cheap materials and a medallion that’s pretty awkward to wear.”

The winner of the 2004IgNobel Peace Prize was Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan who received his prize in person for inventing karaoke which apparently provided an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

The IgNobel for physics went to seven Australians who wrote a serious scientific paper proving that it is easier to drag a sheep downhill on a floor than on a level slope.

An IgNobel prize for medicine went to a team of British scientists for their discovery that London cabbies have bigger brains than the rest of us and a Japanese team won the chemistry award for studying the chemistry of a bronze statue in the city of Kanazawa that unexpectedly fails to attract pigeons.

The IgNobel prize for economics went to Lichtenstein's Karl Schwarzler, chief executive of Xnet, which proposes to rent all the hotels, restaurants, meeting places and sports facilities in all 62 square miles of the country for conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events.

Called the IgNobel Prizes, this years awards will be bestowed in a raucous general prize ceremony on October 3 at 7:30 p.m.

The IgNobel Prizes are a good-natured take-off on science and the Nobel Prizes.

Now in their twelfth year, the Igs (as they are familiarly known) honor achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced." Each year ten new winners are invited to travel to Harvard Universityat their own expensefor the ceremony.

The IgNobel prize in Public Health went to Jillian Clarke, now a student at Howard University in Washington, for testing the validity of the idea that dropped food is safe to eat if it has spent no more than five seconds on the floor.

Another means of communication, used by herring, earned the IgNobel prize in Biology for Magnus Whalberg of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and his colleagues.

The IgNobel committee less elegantly cited them for showing the fish may communicate "by farting".

Jacques Benveniste (IgNobel Chemistry Prize, 1991 and 1998) and his discoveries that water molecules remember things and that the memories can be transmitted over telephone lines.

Louis Kervran (IgNobel Physics Prize, 1993) and his discovery that the calcium in chickens' eggshells is created by a process of cold fusion.

The 2005 IGNobel Prizes were awarded in a ceremony at Harvard University.

www.dickran.net /nobel/ignobel.html (632 words)

The Japan Times Online(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)

Inoue, a 64-year-old Osaka native and one of this year's 10 IgNobel Prize winners, was warmly greeted by an audience of 1,200 at Harvard's historic Sanders Theatre near Boston.

Each winner received a handmade IgNobel Prize, a medallion made of tinfoil and a certificate from genuine Nobel chemistry laureates William Lipscomb (1976) and Dudley Herschbach (1986), and Richard Roberts (physiology or medicine of 1993).

IgNobel is a pun on "ignoble," according to Abrahams, who has organized the IgNobel Prize ceremonies every year since 1991 ahead of the genuine Nobel Prize announcements.

This sense of wonder and glorious silliness was on display at the 17th First Annual IgNobel Prize awards, held October 2 at Harvard's Sanders Theater, and co-sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research, the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association, the Harvard Computer Society and the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.

The height of the show, however, is the presentation of the actual IgNobel prizes.

To win such a prize, you usually have to have had a scholarly paper published in peer-reviewed journal, although exceptions are made, especially for the IgNobel Peace prize and often for the prize in economics.

www.nystringer.com /html/ig.htm (495 words)

Ig Nobel Prize Tour of the UK and Ireland 2004(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)

MASTER OF CEREMONIES: Marc Abrahams (organizer of the IgNobel Prizes, and editor of the Annals of Improbable Research).

Soprano Judith McQuillan and pianist Heather McMordie performed the IgNobel nano-opera "Atom and Eve." Behind them (to the right in photo) the words were projected on a large screen.

After the show, Ig winner Kees Moeliker and his stuffed mallard duck were popular figures in pubs throughout Dublin.

For their contribution, the father and son who patented this baldness-beater 26 years ago were awarded an IgNobel prize in engineering this week.

The 14th annual IgNobel awards, handed out by Nobel Prize winners, recognize scientific research that "makes you laugh, then makes you think," said Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, which gives out the award.

The IgNobel in public health went to Jillian Clarke her for investigation into the "five-second rule," which says that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat as long as it's picked up within five seconds.

Some of the world’s top scientific minds—and all of their attendant eccentricities—piled into Memorial Hall for the “14th first annual” IgNobel ceremony, which celebrates scientific projects that “cannot or should not be reproduced,” said master of ceremonies Marc Abrahams, who edits the Cambridge-based Annals of Improbable Research.

The IgNobel award for psychology went to Daniel Simons, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Harvard’s own Christopher Chabris.

Simons, who has followed the IgNobels for several years, says the dubious honor came as a pleasant surprise for research he completed six years ago.

The Chemistry IgNobel was given to the Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain for “using advanced technology to convert liquid from the River Thames into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers,” according to an IgNobel press release.

Recipients of the Psychology IgNobel Prize were Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University.